Holding On
by The Faerie of Darkness
Summary: A MaxLiesel story, because sometimes, just holding onto the ones you love isn't enough.


**Hi! I had to write a continuation of the book for English class, so I decided a fanfic would be perfect! And apparently, my classmates didn't think it sucked... **

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It started the day that she saw him there amongst the Jewish feet, hair still like twigs, eyes still swampy, and yet Liesel thought he was the most beautiful thing in the world, more beautiful than her books, more amazing to see intact than _The Whistler_. It was Max, her Max, and nothing could be better.

It didn't matter how much trouble it would be, it seemed to her at the time, as long as Max knew. She tried too hard to get to him, and held onto him too long.

*** * * ONE OF THE BOOK THIEF'S FLAWS * * ***

**She held on too long.**

**She held onto everyone she loved but**

**sometimes she held on just a little longer than **

**she could really afford to.**

It was only because she held on too long that she was noticed, but she only held on too long because she had to, not knowing if she would ever have a chance to hold on too long to Max again. And even then, when she was dragged away by the solider, she was still holding on to him. Max could feel her. She was still keeping her arms too tightly around his chest and warming his heart.

Liesel could feel Max too, his arms keeping hers warm even as the guard slammed her into a wall, and she thought of every touch, even the briefest contact with him and savored it. She would have to savor those touches for years, because that would be how long it would be before he could hug her again.

Rudy was the only one that she could really hold on too long to, then only one that could let her. She didn't always hold him with her hands, but she was always, always holding him. What she didn't know was that Rudy was always holding her as well, and she just couldn't feel it very often. She also didn't know that Rudy often couldn't feel her.

And their holding was more of a secret, an attempt at a joke. I watched her as she tried so hard to never admit how much she liked him, not today. She would kiss him, she knew, but that would be someday. To her, to every child, there was always a tomorrow when she could tease Rudy again. Adults believe that children think themselves immortal. I know that children don't stop to fret about their looming mortality.

However, for all of her holding, Liesel took a very long time to realize just how she held them. For instance, the book thief held Hans and Rosa very close to her, pressed right against her chest so she could feel their heartbeats. She held her Mama and brother a little farther away, because they were with me, and holding on to them hurt a little. She held in her hand, and occasionally would press them to her chest, just to remember. Rudy carved out a very special place and was held inside of the book thief's heart, hiding from her even as she knew that she holding him. When he died, he left that hole in her heart.

On the night of the bombing on Himmel Street, Liesel held on to Rudy longer than she could afford to. Even when she approached him, she knew that he was dead, and she knew that she had to let go, but was either too weak to let go, or to strong to let him go.

*** * * A DOWNSIDE TO NOT BEING HUMAN * * ***

**I will never know why she couldn't let go.**

The kiss was not to be cruel or mocking to Rudy in life, but to hope, to not let go and hope that he was alive even though Liesel knew he wasn't. Him not responding proved that she had held on too long, and the full weight of holding Rudy for too long crushed her, because holding someone else only shows you how heavy they are.

Liesel thought that after Rudy, falling in love again would mean holding on to someone new, and she didn't want to risk finding out how heavy they were until too late. She had forgotten that she was already holding on to a little bird, a bird with swampy eyes and the heart of a fighter. He was light enough that holding onto him didn't hurt, but not so light that she could forget him completely. And when that bird fluttered back into her life with feathers and not twigs, she had to stop and hold onto him so tight that he could never forget her, and never let her stop holding on too long.

In all of her holding, she noticed something about Max. She had first held him far away, like her mother and brother, then closer where Hans and Rosa were, and very quietly and very stealthily, he built a nest in the hole Rudy left, making that nest big enough to fill the space so that Liesel could feel him there.

It was not so unnatural, even though they had years between them. I have no choice over the age of the souls I collect, and it seems that the humans that own those souls have no choice of the age at which love connects them. For Max and Liesel, their love was of those that held on and survived. They were both the last of their families, and they had made a family of each other. It was good for them that their love could evolve at the same time.

On the day they were married, I was gathering the soul of a small Italian girl who died at the very moment they kissed. She had wandered into the street, and when I came for her, I savored a white that was the same color as Liesel's dress. Later, as I gathered a Japanese family that had perished in a fire while asleep, I found the color of Max's bowtie at the very moment I touched the soul of the newborn. I would find their colors many times.

When Liesel gave birth to her first son, I found the color of Max's eyebrows scrunched together in worry in a young dancer I took from Russia, and the color of the child's cheeks during the first scream in a boy that had fallen over the railing of a boat. I was carrying his soul out of the water when the child took it first breath, and it screamed just as I broke the surface.

When the book thief received a book as a Christmas gift from Max, not only was the spine the same swampy color as Max's eyes, it was also the precise color of a teenager in Delaware's as he died on an operating table. Her smiling teeth were a brilliant white that I still remember from all those years ago. Their tree was the green I found in the pocket of a little boy who never even knew he was lost in the snow.

It was strange, how their happiness was always the same color as the sadder deaths I gathered at the same time. Perhaps it was irony, like all of the sadness of their own lives was leaking out into the world around them as happiness took over.

And yet, I still watched the book thief, and her Max, even as I picked up so many other Maxes and stealers of books. I watched her, but at the same time had to watch him, the bird that made a nest in her heart, and when I picked up her soul just yesterday, it was as light and as soft as a feather.

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** I love reviews. They make me feel like I did something. Constructive criticism makes me scream with joy and fall out of chairs. Or my bed.**

**~ The Faerie of Darkness**


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